Commissions are good for stretching my visual vocabulary and content but also for requiring me to verbalize the process. The following is an excerpt from an email with a client about the painting below:
I made this piece thinking about the way the fruits of the Spirit are grown in the context of a home. I recently came across the question, "How do you contain within a domestic arrangement a howling respect for the wild in each other?" which was a driving force in the work. I see the spirit of God in us as a beautifully wild movement that radiates our truest selves. So often, at least in my case, daily to do's and ought to's from the culture pacify and dilute the expressive poetry we are meant to live out.
In the painting I used pattern as a signifier of domesticity and the abstract elements as an outlet for movement and untamed expression. The color palette seeks to both compliment and push against the floral wallpaper-esque ground of the painting. The shapes and imagery loosely echo the architecture of home and nature which I hope makes room for rumination on the tension of humanity being creatures who live in self-created worlds.
